10 Months Of Date Night Ideas

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, marriage is bloody hard work! Contrary to what Hollywood would have you believe, marriage isn’t full of lazy mornings reading the papers with a coffee and late nights out on the town showing everyone how wildly in love you are. Sadly once the honeymoon is over, it’s back to doing the washing and paying the bills and all the other mundane life-admin that needs doing, (shoutout to those of you that haven’t taken a trip down the aisle but have been putting up with each other’s habits for years too). It’s all too easy to allow the day to day stuff to take over until one day you look at each other over a mound of laundry, with the screams of your beautiful off-spring echoing in your ears and realise that you haven’t had any time to yourselves since Friends was on t.v. the first time round. At this point you either say f**k this and go your separate ways, or you put some work in to changing things so that there is time for you two to be a couple again. It’s time for a Date Night. (If you don’t want to read my ramblings just scroll to the end for my 10 months of date night ideas.)

Now, I’m someone who used to scoff at the mention of date night. I would be sat there smugly thinking that it was the most over the top thing I had ever heard of and that couples that live with each other don’t need date night, because they see each other every day. So I paid little attention to any date night chatter until I started to hear the term more and more often and my Pinterest feed began to fill up with date night ideas. My curiosity was getting the better of me and I couldn’t help myself from clicking on a few posts and seeing what other couples were up to. Oh boy was I about to feel a lot less smug!

Whereas we hadn’t gone on a date since about 1999, these couples were ditching their kids and laundry responsibilities and were going out and having fun at least once a month!! They were eating in fancy restaurants or taking moonlit walks along the river while we were at home in our pyjamas, eating biscuits and watching Greys Anatomy. All of a sudden I felt like we were total losers and completely failing at this whole relationship lark, because we were too caught up in working and looking after the kids to look after our marriage. We were cruising our way into mid-life and boring fart status as we would have nothing to talk about, because we never did anything except our annual holiday. Things had to change.

I started to think about how nice it would be to have one night a month where it was just us two going out and doing something and I had all these great ideas, but then I pissed myself off because I started thinking ‘why should I do all the hard work of thinking of these ideas, sorting the babysitter out and arranging everything, why isn’t he doing anything?’ So I stopped planning date nights and sulked about not going on any. All the while Mark was completely unaware of my annoyance because a) I hadn’t told him that I wanted to do date night in the first place and b) I didn’t tell him that I was annoyed with him because he hadn’t arranged any of the dates that he knew nothing about. Do you see the weird way my brain works? This is why we need date night, he’s been putting up with this for 21 years!

On the other side of town my brother and his fiancee´, who are still in that loved up wedding planning stage, go on date night once a month. Err they’ve been together 5 minutes (it’s actually about 5 years) and they’ve got this relationship thing worked out much better than we have! It was time to put my date night plan back into action and I was just going to have to suck up my annoyances about organising it all and get on with it. So I put together a list of 10 things we can do together – carry on reading for my date night ideas if I haven’t bored you to death already.

Before you read on let’s get this straight, most of these ideas are going to be predictable to someone but these are just things that I would like to do with my husband and I thought I’d share them with you. Also, the title of this post says ’10 Months of Date Night Ideas’ because these are once a month ideas, which leaves you two months to think of your own date night ideas. If you can’t think of anything for those last two months, save one for Christmas and do something seasonal and save the other for when you’re on holiday or it’s your birthday and then you’ve got a full year’s worth of activities to do!

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10 Months Of Date Night Ideas

Go Out For Dinner
I hear you all yawning and saying ‘how predictable’ but I did warn you and do you know what? Having one night a month when I don’t have to think about what to cook, and then cooking it, is a winner for me! We don’t have to go anywhere posh (although that would be nice), I’d be quite happy with a trip to Frankie and Benny’s to be honest with you.

Go To The Cinema
To see an 18 rated movie! No Trolls or Disney for date night – sorry Disney I feel like I’m betraying you – but something gritty and hard-hitting, something a grown up would watch. I’ll probably fall asleep half an hour in but that’s not the point.

Go Bowling
It’s as if we’re in our teens again and only have £20 each to last the night. Who doesn’t love a game of bowling and we could ‘double date’ with our friends. It will be like Just Seventeen magazine said dates should be.

See A Show or Concert
OK so this is a pricey option, but I love seeing West-End shows and going to concerts. (The last concert I went to was Little Mix, it was very good but not really date night material)

Stay At A Hotel
This is pricey too, well depending on your choice of hotel but I’m not judging. How decadent to get up in the morning and not have to make the bed!

Take A Cooking Lesson
We’ve done this as part of a group activity before and it was so much fun. I think it would be great to go back and learn how to make a dish that we could replicate at home – ooh bonus idea, take it in turns to cook a posh meal at home each month.

Go For Cocktails
Enough said.

Go Dancing
I have no rhythm so a dancing lesson would be great fun. Not sure Mark is into Strictly though so maybe just getting hot and sweaty in a nightclub would be a better option for us. Do nightclubs even exist anymore? Maybe we’ll have to downgrade this to dancing in the kitchen.

Play A Board Game
It doesn’t have to be boring, you could make up some saucy forfeits for the loser, ooh-err missus!

Sit Out Under The Stars
Isn’t that the ultimate romantic movie cliche´, wrapped in blankets sitting out under the stars? I think it’s a lovely idea.

So there you go, 10 months of date night ideas. I hope you’ll try them all out but don’t feel that you have to send me a review of how each one went. You never know we might manage to get on a few too, not tonight though – I’ve got some Netflix to watch!

Further Reading

Thinking about having a weekend break without the kids? We headed to the Cotswolds for our anniversary and spent the weekend down on the South Coast another time.